Summary: The Pergamum church was accommodating those within its body that taught doctrines and lived lives which offended God; their open-minded, laissez-faire attitude was a cancer on the church.

Sermon Objective: The Pergamum church was accommodating those within its body that taught doctrines and lived lives which offended God. Their open-minded, laissez-faire attitude was a cancer on the church.

We began a series earlier this month called “American Idols: Looking at Ourselves and Our Loyalties Through the Eyes of Jesus”

There are two categories of idols:

{1} an image or other material object representing a deity to which religious worship is addressed.

{2} any person or thing regarded with blind admiration, adoration, or devotion.

Our concern is with the latter. There are a myriad of “things” which could be classified as an idol … they are limited only by the passions of the individual in question. But there are certain dispositions or demeanors that our culture serves and pursues as an end in themselves … they have become idolatrous.

What we discover in “The Revelation” is that they are not just limited to our culture but that others have also pursued these with “blind devotion”. We have looked at Ephesus’ fallacy of superiority and Smyrna’s temptation to shop for a more convenient faith, others will include:

Today we will look at the church in Pergamum and the danger of a Laissez-Faire attitude. It is found in Rev. 2:12-17.

Intro

It sets inland from Ephesus and Smyrna about 65 miles. What it lacked in way of commerce (no harbor) it clearly made up for in culture and power. Pergamum was the capital of Asia-Minor; it had retained that title for some 400 years. It had guarded that role and responsibility very rigorously.

Culturally, Pergamum was a powerhouse. It boasted of a library with over 200,000 parchments (second only to Alexandria), many fabulous statues, a gladiator arena (which also doubled as the place for executions), a beautiful view of the Caicus valley, and more temples than any other of the seven cities. IN FACT, IT WAS CLASSIFIED AS “THE TEMPLE WARDEN” AND WAS THE CENTER OF THE EMPEROR CULT.

In Will Durant’s work, “The Story of Civilization” (Vol. 2) he describes this:

“At the center and summit of …the city was the shrine of the city god; participation in the worship of the god was the sign, the privilege, and the requisite of citizenship. In the spring, the Greek cities celebrated the Athesterion, or feast of flowers, a three-day festival to Dionysus [a chief deity at Pergamum!] in which wine flowed freely and everybody was more or less drunk. At the end of March came the great Dyonysia, a widely observed series of processional and plays accompanied by general revelry. At the beginning of April various cities … celebrated [Aphrodite’s] great festival, the Aphrodisia; and on that occasion, for those who cared to take part, sexual freedom was the order of the day” (The Story of Civilization [New York: Simon and Schuster, 1939], vol. 2, Life of Greece, pp. 75, 185).